Letter from Nguyen ai Quac [Ho Chi Minh] to Secretary of State Robert Lansing (with enclosure)

06/18/1919

Records of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace

National Archives Identifier: 5049414

This letter, written by
Nguyen ai Quac, later known as Ho Chi Minh, as a representative of “le
Groupe des Patriotes Annamites” [the Group of Annamite Patriots],
contains the enclosure “Revendications du Peuple Annamite” [Claims of
the Annamite People], which called for certain civil rights to be
bestowed on the Vietnamese people of French Indochina. The letter and
enclosure were submitted at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of
World War I, in which the Allied forces met to set the peace terms for
the defeated nations.

We take the liberty of setting fourth the claims of the Annamite
people on the occasion of the Allied victory. We count on your great
kindness to honor our appeal by your support... Since the victory of
the Allies, all subject peoples are frantic with hope at the prospect
of an era of right and justice which should begin for them... in the
struggle of civilization against barbarism.

In France, December 26, 1920
You all have known that French imperialism entered Indochina half a
century ago. In its selfish interests, it conquered our country with
bayonets. Since then we have not only been oppressed and exploited
shamelessly, but also tortured and poisoned pitilessly. Plainly
speaking, we have been poisoned with opium, alcohol, etc. I cannot, in
some minutes, reveal all the atrocities inflicted on Indochina. Prisons
outnumber schools and are always overcrowded with detainees. Natives
are arrested and sometimes murdered without trial. Vietnamese are
discriminated against. We have neither freedom of press nor freedom of
speech. Even freedom of assembly and freedom of association do not
exist. We have no right to live in other countries or to go abroad as
tourists. We are forced to live in utter ignorance and obscurity
because we have no right to study. In Indochina the colonialists find
all ways and means to force us to smoke opium and drink alcohol to
poison and beset us. Thousands of Vietnamese have been led to a slow
death or massacred to protect other people's interests. Such is the
treatment inflicted upon more that 20 million Vietnamese, that is more
then half the population of France. And they are said to be under
French protection!

Letter to President Harry Truman, February 16, 1945. The letter was
never answered and was not declassified until 1972

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

Our VIETNAM people, as early as 1941, stood by the Allies' side and
fought against the Japanese and their associates, the French
colonialists.

From 1941 to 1945 we fought bitterly, sustained by the patriotism,
of our fellow-countrymen and by the promises made by the Allies at
YALTA, SAN FRANCISCO and POTSDAM.

When the Japanese were defeated in August 1945, the whole Vietnam
territory was united under a Provisional Republican Government, which
immediately set out to work. In five months, peace and order were
restored, a democratic republic was established on legal bases, and
adequate help was given to the Allies in the carrying out of their
disarmament mission.

But the French Colonialists, who betrayed in wartime both the Allies
and the Vietnamese, have come back, and are waging on us a murderous
and pitiless war in order reestablish their domination. Their invasion
has extended to South Vietnam and is menacing us in North Vietnam. It
would take volumes to give even an abbreviated report of the crisis and
assassinations they are committing everyday in this fighting area.

This aggression is contrary to all principles of international law
and the pledge made by the Allies during World War II. It is a
challenge to the noble attitude shown before, during, and after the war
by the United States Government and People. It violently contrasts with
the firm stand you have taken in your twelve point declaration, and
with the idealistic loftiness and generosity expressed by your
delegates to the United Nations Assembly, MM. BYRNES, STETTINIUS, AND
J.F. DULLES.
The French aggression on a peace-loving people is a direct menace to
world security. It implies the complicity, or at least the connivance
of the Great Democracies. The United Nations ought to keep their words.
They ought to interfere to stop this unjust war, and to show that they
mean to carry out in peacetime the principles for which they fought in
wartime.

Our Vietnamese people, after so many years of spoliation and
devastation, is just beginning its building-up work. It needs security
and freedom, first to achieve internal prosperity and welfare, and
later to bring its small contribution to world-reconstruction.

These security and freedom can only be guaranteed by our
independence from any colonial power, and our free cooperation with all
other powers. It is with this firm conviction that we request of the
United Sates as guardians and champions of World Justice to take a
decisive step in support of our independence.

What we ask has been graciously granted to the Philippines. Like the
Philippines our goal is full independence and full cooperation with the
UNITED STATES. We will do our best to make this independence and
cooperation profitable to the whole world.

I am Dear Mr. PRESIDENT,

Respectfully Yours,

(Signed)
Ho Chi Minh

Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 1, 1945[Could I Send] to the United States of America a delegation of about
50 Vietnam youths with a view to establish friendly cultural relations
with American youth on the one hand, and carrying on further studies in
Engineering, Agriculture, as well as other lines of specialization on
the other. They have been all these years keenly interested in things
American and earnestly desirous to get in touch with American people
whose fine stand for the noble ideals of international Justice and
Humanity, and whose modern technical achievements have so strongly
appealed to them.

Vietnamese Declaration of Independance, September 2, 1945
"All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness."

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence
of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this
means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the
peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of The French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights
of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with
equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights."

Those are undeniable truths.

Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists,
abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have
violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. The have
acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every
democratic liberty.

They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct
political regimes in the North, the Center, and the South of Viet-Nam
in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being
united.

They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly
slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of
blood.

They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism
against our people.
To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone,
impoverished our people and devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, our
raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of bank notes and the
export trade.

They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced people,
especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.

They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie, they
have mercilessly exploited our workers.

In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists violated
Indochina's territory to establish new bases in their fight against the
Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and
handed over our country to them.

Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke
of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries
increased. The result was that, from the end of last year to the
beginning of this year, from Quang Tri Province to the North of
Viet-Nam, more than two million of our fellow citizens died from
starvation. 9 March 1945, the French troops were disarmed by the
Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing
that not only were they incapable of "protecting" us, but that, in the
span five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese.

On several occasions before 9 March, the Viet Minh League urged the
French to ally themselves with it against the Japanese. Instead of
agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists so intensified their
terrorist activities against the Viet Minh members that before fleeing
they massacred a great number of our political prisoners detained at
Yen Bay and Cao Bang.

Notwithstanding all this, our fellow citizens have always manifested
toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the
Japanese Putsch of March, 1945, the Viet Minh League helped many
Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese
jails, and protected French lives and property.

From the autumn of 1940, our country had in fact ceased to be a
French colony and had become a Japanese possession.

After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people
rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic
Republic of Viet-Nam.

The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese
and not from the French.
The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai
has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a
century have fettered them and have won independence for the
Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic
regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place
has been established the present Democratic Republic.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government,
representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we
break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we repeal
all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to
on behalf of Viet-Nam, and we abolish all the special rights the French
have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland.
The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are
determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French
colonialists to reconquer their country.

We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Teheran and San
Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and
equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of
Viet-Nam.

A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more
than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the
Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must
be free and independent.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the
Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, solemnly declare to the world that
Viet-Nam has the right to be a free and independent country and in fact
it is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to
mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their
lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and
liberty

Ho Chi Minh quoted by Rene J. Defourneaux, August 9, 1966
I have always been impressed with your country's treatment of the
Philippines. You kicked the Spanish out and let the Filipinos develop
their own country. You were not looking for real estate, and I admire
you for that. I have a government that is organized and ready to go.
Your statesmen make eloquent speeches about helping those with
self-determination. We are self-determined. Why not help us? Am I any
different from Nehru, Quezon- even your own George Washington? I, too,
want to set my people free.

Members of the O.S.S. Deer
Team with Viet Minh leaders, including Ho Chi Minh, (standing third from
left) during training in 1945. Henry Prunier is fourth from right.